


They Live In The Dark

by ToMarsAndBeyond3



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Get ready for angst, I'm alive, In blackwing, Its the boys, Should I do a whumptober prompt?, yooo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 13:25:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16327115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToMarsAndBeyond3/pseuds/ToMarsAndBeyond3
Summary: The man named Martin lived in the dark.





	They Live In The Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Hi we're not dead. We're actually just juggling a few different writing projects right now. The werewolf series is STILL ONGOING, but we are also working on an actual book and a Reverse!AU. So, look out for that.
> 
> This is actually something I did at a writing workshop in the library down the street. I miss reading all of your lovely comments. Stay safe.

Martin was surrounded in a blinding dark.

Those were the days, every moment and every move he made cloaked in the curtain of black. He wasn't alone though, of course not. He could hear the grating of other voices, two others. There was once, a disruption in their comfortable silence, when he asked their names, and got less than helpful responses.

Cross and Gripps. What sort of names were those?

But every story had an end, and every end always led to a grim beginning. It was this that Martin found himself in when the lights went on for the first time, and he could see. He saw their sterile room, so far underground that he could almost smell the earth that had been dug up. He saw the door, opened only by the will of a machine and an unforgiving universe. He saw his own hands, marred by endless tests and experiments by scientists who didn't understand. And he saw his friends.

Martin exchanged looks with Cross and Gripps, his voice gone for the first time in an eternity. They had sat there in the dark, telling stories of their old lives and sleeping in a pile when the loneliness got too much. They were brothers, almost, even if blood relation wasn't a factor.

But now, they all had nothing to say.

What could you say to this?

Another disruption in their lives, footsteps, came in from the distance. Martin tensed, every muscle tight and his fists clenched so hard that his nails dug into his palms. What monstrosity did those people have this time, what method of torture did they want to subject his brothers to? They could hurt him all they wanted, but not them. Never them.

The door opened, and Martin didn't get a chance to drain the guard of every emotion they had. Instead of attempted murder, he took a step back, only staying up thanks to Cross placing a steady hand on his back. The guard threw in a boy.

A small boy.

The child was the very definition of a child, big, bright eyes and wild hair, smaller than Martin’s own imagination could dream up. But besides that spark, the child’s eyes were so terribly frightened. He was adorned in that same horribly tacky jumpsuit they were all forced to wear, and Martin's stomach dropped.

The door slammed shut, the sound echoing against the walls. And the lights, they did not go off.

The boy spoke, a quiet, frightened sound, in a language that none of the three understood.

Any idea that Martin could have had of being trapped here was lost, it was essential. A child could not stay here, not in this place. He needed care, education, a family. And damn, if Martin and his boys had to do it themselves, then that was the way it was going to be.

“Hey.” Martin crouched down, his hand out to the boy cowering against the wall. “Y’ain’t gotta be scared, now, we got’cha.”

“God damn,” Cross mumbled, and he earned a smack upside his head by way of Gripps. “Right, yeah, hell. Small kid.”

“Goat on a hill, this sucks.” Gripps whispered.

“Hey.” Martin repeated, still waiting for the kid to make the first move. “I'm Martin. You're alright there, hear?”

The boy stared with wide eyes; did he understand what Martin was saying?

“Vogel.”

The little boy’s voice had rung out, barely reaching the ears of the three detainees. Oh gods, it was so small, like it had only been used to scream. Martin pulled his hand back, sitting a bit straighter now. There were faces trying to break through his skull, screaming to get just a moment of light for once. Children’s faces, hanging off Martin while their other brother slept. Martin’s head gave a heavy pounding as he tried to remember, smells of something wonderful coming as someone cooked.

“Ozzy!” They were screaming, because Martin realized that nothing was cooking. It was the smell of his baby siblings, trapped in a fire as Osmund held him down outside, ready to take him away. How could children scream like that? How were their little mouths capable of making such guttural-

Martin took a deep breath in, and he opened his eyes back to the near empty room, and the child in front of him.

“Vogel, huh?” Martin made his voice soft, tipping his head to the side as Vogel watched him. “Now, that’s a mighty fine name you got there, little bird. You pick it yourself?”

“Vogel.” Vogel pointed to his chest. He moved his hand then, and pointed to Martin. “Vater.”

“Oh.” Cross stood a bit straighter, his eyes going wide. “It’s German!”

“Yo what!? I ain’t speak that. I speak greek.” Gripps gaver a huff, and he crossed his arms. Cross, however, held up his hand for a high five. 

“I got Norse!”

“Boys.” Martin whispered, trying to smile at Vogel. Bruising painted his neck in a tie-die of purples and blues, creating a grotesque image that should not exist on a child. Vogel didn't seem to be paying it any mind though; or at least, he appeared to be trying not to.

“Vogel,” Vogel repeated.

“Yup. Yer Vogel.” Martin nodded. He held his hand off to the side, but he didn't have to ask for anything.

Gripps had already started moving before Martin had, and now he placed the paper-thin sheet from one of the beds in Martin’s hand. Martin gave it a wave, the course fabric fluttering out like moth trying to be a butterfly, and he draped it around Vogel’s shoulders.

The sheet turned a bright red, and Martin nearly gave a yell.

It was her.

“Well Vogel, uh.” Martin frowned. “That’s, ain’t no being’ scared. That’s just Mona is all.”

“Mona,” Vogel repeated Martin’s phrase, pointing to the sheet whicvh was now blue.

“It’s the little shapeshifter!” Gripps would have, on a normal occasion, shouted this with an excited air. But as Vogel was jumping at his own shadow, Gripps borderline whispered it.

Mona was like them, but so different that it was barely a laughing matter. The little girl was so young, but older than Martin himself. The scientists didn’t understand her either. It wasn’t that she changed herself to look like other objects or people, she literally became them. And sometimes, she had trouble remembering who she was supposed to be. Martin gave a pat of the bit of sheet still laying on the floor, and Vogel pulled his closer around his shoulders.

“Mona’s all great,” Cross started. “But heck are we supposed to do? Nothing that little girl has can get us out.”

“Now it might be a surprise her being’ here, but let’s not underestimate her. She’ll go lion on ya’.” Martin huffed and backed away from Vogel a few feet to give him space. “Now why you suppose the universe gives’ us a kid?”

“Dunno, but he’s ours now.” Gripps only shrugged. “Blackwing can suck my-”

“Blackwing,” Martin interrupted. “Is the place that hurt him in the first place. People here ain’t touching’ him again.”

“They'll touch anyone,” Martin said, and he said it so quietly that it was barely there at all.

Blackwing was worse than the he'll the Christians spoke of. It was worse than the fire pits of the Underworld and the persecution of Odin. It was the blood on the walls, invisible to all except those who could remember spilling it. It was the screams that had long since died out, the silent resignation to tortures and experiments. It was the children strapped to a table for surgery and given no anesthetic.

Blackwing was Martin's brother, smiling from the other side of the door with a gun in his hand.

But besides the pain, besides the loneliness and touch starvation, Blackwing was a child. It was the child that sat in front of the door now, wearing a crudely made uniform on his body and scars on his hands.

He was too young.

There would come a time, though Martin did not know this yet, when they would sit under the stars and fall gently into sleep. Vogel would drape over his brothers, completing their pile of safety and comfort. He was safe, he was their family.

But for now, Martin gave Vogel his space, and Gripps and Cross did the same. He would come around, eventually; he'd realize that they wanted to protect him.

The lights go off, and Project Incubus sits in the dark.


End file.
